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Still, this integral omnipresence admitted, why do not all
things participate in the Intellectual Order in its entirety? Why
has it a first participant, a second, and so on?
We can but see that presence is determined by the fitness of the
participant so that, while Being is omnipresent to the realm of
Being, never falling short of itself, yet only the competent
possess themselves of that presence which depends not upon
situation but upon adequacy; the transparent object and the
opaque answer very differently to the light. These firsts,
seconds, thirds, of participance are determined by rank, by
power, not by place but by differentiation; and difference is no
bar to coexistence, witness soul and Intellectual-Principle:
similarly our own knowledge, the trivial next the gravest; one
and the same object yields colour to our sight, fragrance to
smell, to every sense a particular experience, all presented
simultaneously.
But would not this indicate that the Authentic is diverse,
multiple?
That diversity is simplex still; that multiple is one; for it is
a Reason-Principle, which is to say a unity in variety: all Being
is one; the differing being is still included in Being; the
differentiation is within Being, obviously not within non-Being.
Being is bound up with the unity which is never apart from it;
wheresoever Being appears, there appears its unity; and the unity
of Being is self-standing, for presence in the sensible does not
abrogate independence: things of sense are present to the
Intellectual- where this occurs- otherwise than as the
Intellectual is present within itself; so, too, body's presence
to soul differs from that of knowledge to soul; one item of
knowledge is present in a different way than another; a body's
presence to body is, again, another form of relation.
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